O’Cleary’s Sparks

One person servicing the entire bar and all the tables. She was efficient and pleasant. The wings appetizer was delicious. Things went downhill from there. We waited almost 30 minutes for fish and chips and a Cobb salad. When the Cobb arrived my husband said, «there’s no Cobb in your salad!» A pile of lettuce with the tiniest bits of turkey, avocado and tomato. The fish and chips… terrible. One bite and we were done. Greasy and tough. We told the waitress after we paid and she brought out the manager who refunded our entire meal. The waitress seemed to know how bad it all was as she was nearly in tears even though we were complimentary of her service.
They have a captive audience with the outlet mall there but I won’t be back.

Happening place for a Friday night. Very social atmosphere. Great place to bring friends!

There is an odd smell when you walk in. The servers are really nice but the rest of the staff seems clueless. My first visit to this «pub», I asked for a black and tan, and my wife wanted a strongbow cider. Instead I was served a Guinness and a Killians Irish Red. The waitress took our drinks back to the bartender and I watched the bartender try and make the exact same thing again! Thankfully, our waitress was smarter than the bartender. The incessant electronic squealing from one of the bowling lanes is almost unbearable, and it weirds me out that an Irish pup and a barbeque joint share the same kitchen. I really do hope this place improves though. It’s actually done up pretty well for the most part.

Update to my review from 9 months ago… Not sure what’s happened to this place, but we came in here on December 19^th, after watching star wars movie, and we went up to the bar and sat down.
There was 6 total people at the bar, and 2 tables (with 2 people each). It took the bartender over 6 mins to even say hello, and she gave us menus. We told her we just wanted a couple beers. She said she’d be right back. Well, she wasn’t. It was 11 mins longer before we had a conversation that involved leaving. And we did leave. Which is sad.
I think this place has such potential, but it’s lost. It wasn’t busy, we were there for 15 mins and no beers. I’m thinking that’s a pretty quick thing to get customers happy.
I hope for this place to not be another empty business. They have potential. I know it.

Our party of 4 arrived at 4:00 PM on a Sunday afternoon, for a late lunch after seeing a movie. We stood around in the lobby area for quite awhile waiting for a host or hostess to appear. There was a party of 4 also standing around the reservation desk, who had apparently asked the one hostess to check on something for an upcoming event, and there was no one else available to seat us while she was gone. So we waited. And waited. And waited.
Finally, we did get seated in a small booth near the bar. Our waiter took our drink and food order at the same time, and arrived with the drink part fairly quickly. However, our food order of Fish and Chips, two Burgers, and a Reuben sandwich took quite awhile to fill. Our waiter did come by twice with «your food will be out in just a few minutes» but this was a lie. So we waited some more.
Finally our order arrived. My fish and chips were barely warm, the fries varied from almost warm to cold. The cole slaw was extremely bland, almost tasteless. As the fries cooled even further, they became much tougher and chewy. The meat in the Reuben was fatty, and my wife could only manage to eat half. The burgers were OK, but just OK. I wanted to send my lunch back to see if it could be warmed a bit, but our waiter did not return for 20 minutes after serving to ask if everything was OK. So I decided to eat the rapidly cooling lunch anyway, as I wasn’t too sure he would show up before my items got really cold and inedible.
One thing did arrive quickly, the bill. So I paid it without comment, left a healthy 15% tip (given the mediocre service), and we left.
O’Cleary’s wasn’t crowded or busy during our visit. I don’t understand why there seemed to be such a lack of interest in customer service. This was our first, and last, experience with O’Cleary’s. I’ll be sure to warn others.
PS I find it a bit disturbing that the business manager «Chuck H.» only seems interested in responding to the positive reviews. This is not the path to the improvement that is so sorely needed.

I tried to stop by here before seeing a movie at the galaxy luxury movie theatre.
It’s Monday night during football season, all but one of the TVs is set to the local news? I have to crane my neck to watch football, not the best but not a deal breaker.
I see it’s busy, I observe the taps look at the menu and am ready to order with no delay as soon as the young man asks. And I wait. He makes one lap past me, cheerfully closing out a guest near me and offering them another drink. He doesn’t even look at me.
I wait, it’s pretty busy, no biggie. Another lap past me, no acknowledgement. Getting weird. He passes by again trying to make eye contact, he looks at me and abruptly looks away.
Well third time was the charm for getting ignored, I got up and slowly put my jacket on and headed to the door. At no point in the 10 minutes I was there did the young bartender with slicked back hair or the young male server say a word to me.
What a huge waste of time. I won’t be trying to stop here before or after the movies again anytime soon.

Stopped by here to refuel in between shopping at the Outlets in Sparks. On the positive side, the place is huge. Plenty of seats for everyone. Aside from being an Irish pub, it’s also a sports bar, so there are several TVs all around the space. There’s even a stadium-​type seating on the corner where husbands can supposedly enjoy the games while the wives are busy shopping.
On the downside, it’s a pub. The food is not great. Since we wanted something light and quick, we had the quesadillas and the fish tacos. Both were lacking in taste. Even the salsa that supposed to help, didn’t. I’ve learned not to expect too much in terms of food in these types of place, but I remained hopeful. There’s always a chance that I could be blown away, right? Not today though. But not all is lost ~ when I checked in at Unilocal,I saw that there’s an offer for a free flight of beer. Score! I was able to sample 4 4-​oz beers. I’m not a beer person, so it’s no surprise that my fave of the four was the cider. It was good, so all was not lost.

Love love LOVE this place!
From the minute we walked in the door, we were helped right away.
Christina, a fantastic server with a great attitude and the service manager Mila was beautiful and right on top of things and very involved.
Food and drinks were delicious. … and the sports bar area. … aaaahhhhhh — football will be here!
The restaurant/​bar/​sports bar and bowling alley is beautiful and we WILL be back.
BEST CUSTOMER SERVICE IN RENO!
Thank you Christina and Mila! !!!

Not bad, but not great! The staff was very very accommodating. Our waitress was very very nice and prompt.
We got the smoked garlic wings. They were tasty. I got the fish tacos, eh I’ve had better. The shell was way too big for the fish so I had to cut some of the tortilla off. Flavor of the fish was ok. It came with chips and salsa the chips tasted old or they’ve been sitting out too long. The salsa tasted bland.
My husband got the Reuben and fries and it tasted great. Very well seasoned and the fries were seasoned well also, but didn’t taste fresh.
We wanted to try it out and we did, but we’re not sure if we would go back we went there because we watched a movie and saw that it was new.
The waitress though got my raspberry tea spot on. I asked her to water it down and she did it perfect. The staff was amazing!!!

My husband had the Rueben, I had the Caesar salad and fried shrooms. My husband loved his sandwich and my salad was delicious. The fries were pretty good.
The mushroom are huge but the mushroom taste was over powering the filling and other flavors. Could not taste the cream cheese or the batter. The sauce it comes with is awesome though.
Want to come back and try their spicy garlic win

Visiting O’Cleary’s was a unique experience. I don’t think that the Reno/​Sparks area has anything to offer quite like this. O’Cleary’s offers a patio area, a sports bar, bowling, and darts. There are plenty of things for you to enjoy in addition to a meal and/​or drinks.
The drink options were kind of limited, but the food is pretty good. The fun atmosphere is what really makes O’Cleary’s a place you have to try at least once. It would make for a great date night or for a group gathering: food and drinks on the patio and bowling afterwards.

We stopped in here for a beer after a sold out movie derailed our evening plans, and it was a perfectly fine place to do that.
The beer selection is okay, but nothing to write home about. I really liked that there were so many fun activities to do in the bar (bowling, pool, darts, and a ton of TVs to catch the game). Not sure if it costs money to do these things (though I would guess that it does).
The food that wandered by looked okay, and the prices are reasonable, so I might check it out in the future should another movie night go awry (sidenote: it took me five minutes to find out how to spell «awry»).

I am giving this place four stars for the combination of the quality of the food and the excellent service. Our first time here and was a little worried that it was so empty on a Sunday afternoon but it quickly filled up after we sat down.
Our server was, well, fantastic. I think her name was Mila? I appreciate a positive attitude. Having been a waiter in a past life I know it stinks working the lunch shift on a Sunday but you could not tell from the way she does her job. She was very helpfull with the menu and when I say that I mean to say that she actually asked us some questions about what we were looking for and made some recommendations that worked out well.
The food. My daughter had some sort of smothered french fries that seemed to please her. The wife had a smoked turkey sandwich on a toasted (or maybe grilled?) marbled bread. She ordered this with sweet potato french fries and judged both to be good. The fries are an extra buck with the burgers and sandwiches or you can get a salad for an extra two bucks. The additional charge is not an issue because the prices are very reasonable and I actually like the idea that I can just get a sandwich or burger ala cart.
I did not, of course, have my burger ala cart because, well, it was a Sunday, I had a pint of beer, and the game was on the big screen so why not? My fries, which were the regular fries, were lighlty seasoned and tasty. The burger, well that was was EXCELLENT. I ordered the South of Ireland burger. Layered with fire roasted chiles and cheddar cheese the flavor was bold without being overly spicy. The best parts though were the brioche bun, which I can’t do justice writing about here. It was fresh, soft, warm, and with thst little layer of oil or whatever it is that you get on a perfectly cooked bun. I have eaten many a burger that was otherwise good but ruined by a stale bun, so this was appreciated.
The other highlight was the patty. I ordered it medium and it actually came out medium. True medium is a hint of pink in the center. Not rare, not overcooked. But pink and juicy. Not many places get it right.
I have seen some average reviews of this place on here and maybe I hit it on a good ay or maybe they are going in a good direction. I hope it is the latter. They also have some bowling lanes and big recliners where you can sit and watch sport on big screens so it might be a fun place to hang out and I am looking forward to hitting it up again.